“Jacob!” His men came clattering down the back stairs. “There’s no one upstairs, no sign of anyone trying to slip in one of the windows. I checked the locks to make sure.”
At the noise, the third man stepped in from the hall. “No one on this floor or any suspicious tracks around the perimeter of the house.”
Jacob nodded, still regarding Lettie with eyes that were dark and concerned. “Let’s go then. He has to be out there somewhere.”
His men filed outside, but Jacob lingered in the kitchen. Finally, he sheathed his revolver and stood with his hands on his hips, studying her intently.
“See to it that all the doors and windows are barred. Once Mama and the boarders return, let them in. Then don’t answer the door for anyone else until morning. Understand?”
“Yes, Jacob.”
“And Lettie?”
“Yes, Jacob?”
Silence shuddered between them, broken only by the whine of the wind and the distant pounding of the loose shutter.
“Be careful, little sister.”
She flashed him a grin, but it felt stiff on her own lips. “I’m always careful.”
Rather than being teased from his somber mood, Jacob stepped toward her, his expression grim. “No. You’re not. Sometimes you don’t think before you act.”
“Jacob—”
“Listen to me, Lettie. The world isn’t as pretty as you see it. You imagine everything to be simple and sweet.” His tone grew gentler. “Just like you’re simple and sweet.”
“Jacob—”
“Don’t let anyone into the house, Lettie. Please.” Jamming his hat onto his head, Jacob turned on his heel, slamming the door behind him so that it rattled, then grew still.
Long moments later, Lettie heard the men disappear in the darkness, yet she still waited several agonizing minutes until she was sure they were gone. Then she moved to check each window, shielding the glass with her hands and peering into the night. Though she couldn’t see much, she was almost certain that her brother had truly gone. Still, she had the feeling that someone was out there. Watching.
Dousing all the lamps in the house but one, and checking the locks just as her brother had asked, Lettie adjusted the wick on the remaining light so that it burned dimly, casting the kitchen into shadow. Then she pushed the table aside and rolled back the rug. Hesitantly reaching toward the rope handle to the trap, she lifted it away and held the lamp over the opening until its light fell on the dark-haired man who peered up at her from the cellar.
Although he must have heard Jacob leave, he still held his revolver in his good hand, aiming at Lettie with deadly intent. His features were cast in shadow and light. Smooth planes, rough hollows.
Lettie gazed down at him for long moments, amazed at how much he resembled the man she’d fabricated so long before. Yet in so many ways he was different. Disturbing.
She knew nothing at all about this man, she realized. Not even his name. She had no guarantee that he hadn’t set fire to the bank in Carlton. Or that he hadn’t tried to murder the deputy.
Or that he wouldn’t try to murder her.
“Who are you?” she finally demanded, her voice little more than a whisper.
The man in the cellar studied her intently, rising from the sack of potatoes he’d been using as a seat. Still holding the revolver at the ready, he eased up the steps, his gaze furtively searching out the corners of the room before he brushed past her to peer around the edge of the kitchen door into the hall.
“They’re gone,” Lettie reassured him. “Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Jacob has a man waiting a few yards away from the house. My brother tends to be a bit of a mother hen.” Her words trailed away as she realized that, in this instance, Jacob had a right to worry about her safety.
The stranger finally sheathed his revolver and turned to regard her, his expression guarded, his gaze carefully masked. Although Lettie knew she should probably fear this man, in the dim lamplight he made a beguiling picture. His eyes gleamed a hot azure blue. His hair lay dark and damp against his sweat-beaded skin.
Lettie glanced at the man’s hand, taking in the crease that cut across his wrist. Though he must have felt her gaze, the man offered no explanations, no excuses. Instead, he waited in the shadows of the room, no doubt expecting a flood of accusations. But Lettie had seen enough bullet wounds in her day to recognize the graze on the man’s hand. And she knew better than to ask how the wound had occurred when he’d evidently been eluding Jacob’s posse for the better part of an hour.
“We’ve got to take care of that injury,” she stated instead, brushing past him.
His fingers snapped around her wrist.
Lettie bit back a gasp. There was a leashed violence to his touch and, conversely, a buried sense of control.
He gazed at her long and hard, taking in the braid-crimped length of her honey-brown hair, the smooth slope of her brow, the warmth of her nut-brown eyes.
Then, without speaking, he released her.
Lettie crossed toward the stove, taking a cloth from the rack and dampening it with some of the warm water left from her washing. When she turned, the stranger stood with his head slightly cocked, listening to the darkness.
“Where are the boarders?”
Lettie didn’t comment on the fact that he seemed to know more about her than she about him; she merely supplied, cryptically, “Poe.”
His brow creased, and without speaking, he somehow forced an explanation.
“There’s a reading of Poe at the town hall. Everyone in Madison has gone.” Lettie gestured for the stranger to sit on one of the trestle benches beside the table. “Please. Sit down and I’ll take care of your hand.”
The man’s eyes grew cautious, and his head shifted so that the lean planes of his face seemed obscured in shadow. Lettie’s heart began to quicken slightly when the silence shivered in the room. The distant banging of the loose shutter only seemed to make her more aware of the empty house.
“Why are you doing this for me?” he asked, his voice filled with suspicion.
“I need to wash and bandage your hand or it will become infected.”
She took a step forward and reached for his injured hand, but he pulled it away.
“No, why are you—”
“Protecting you from my brother?” she interrupted softly.
“Yes.” His eyes narrowed as if he wished he could peer into her mind. Eyes so clear and blue Lettie wondered why they gave the impression of allowing a person to see through to his very soul, while in reality they hid any hint of emotion or vulnerability.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice echoing with sincerity. She gestured to the hand cradled against his lean stomach. “But it appears you need some protecting.”
The curve of his lips twitched in an unwilling smile.
“Sit,” she whispered again.
With obvious reluctance, the stranger sat, but not before setting his revolver on the table beside him.
Lettie’s eyes bounced from the revolver to the man’s face. Once again, he regarded her with inscrutable eyes.
Hunted eyes.
Drawing away, Lettie gathered her mother’s basket of ointments and bandages from the kitchen hutch, placing them on the table beside him before retrieving a basin and filling it with warm water from the stove.
She reached for his hand, surprised by the sudden burst of need she felt to touch him. Just to see if he’s real.
Her glance darted up to see his reaction to her touch and became entangled in his own gaze. Her fingers trembled slightly. She looked away.
Though it should only have taken a moment to wash the wound, apply an herbal ointment, and bind the cut, Lettie found herself lingering over the task. Never had she realized that a man’s hand could be so fascinating. So absorbing. His fingers were strong, blunt-tipped. His hands broad, his wrists supple.
Soon, however, her task was completed, the wound covered. And Lettie had no excuse to touch him.
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“You have a gentle touch.”
At the unexpected sound of his voice, she glanced at him, then quickly looked away and busied herself with tidying the basket and putting it back on the hutch. When she turned, it was to find that the stranger was making preparations to leave.
“Thanks for the kindness.”
“No!” When he stepped past her, Lettie reached out to grab his arm. She couldn’t let him go. Not yet. “You’ve got to stay.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. Despite the shadow of beard beginning to darken his skin, the square stubborn shape of his jaw was clearly evident. “Why?”
Why? She couldn’t tell him how she’d begun to embroider her abduction into elaborate proportions. She couldn’t tell him how she’d hungered for his return to break the endless pattern of her days, how she’d dreamed of kissing him, just to see if the tingling sensations she’d imagined with the Highwayman could also become reality.
She hurriedly scrambled for a logical excuse. “I—I told you: My brother worries about me like an old maiden aunt. He probably has someone watching me from just beyond the house. The minute you step out that door, you’ll have a posse breathing down your neck.”
“I can’t stay in the cellar.”
Lettie frowned, realizing that was true.
From out on the road, she heard the distant scrabble of hooves on the gravel and the muffled chatter of people beginning to drift home from the poetry reading.
“Come on!” she whispered fiercely, dragging him out of the way, slamming the trap closed, and moving the rug and table back into place.
“Where?”
“My room.”
“Lettie? Where are you, child?”
Lettie just managed to shove the Highwayman into her bedroom, slam the door, and race down the back staircase before the front door creaked open and her mother began to search for her.
Moving as quickly and quietly as she could, Lettie darted through the kitchen, then slowed to a more respectable pace as she moved through the hall to the vestibule. “Here I am, Mother.”
“But I just—” Celeste Grey regarded her daughter in confusion, her lips tightening in disapproval. “Were you in the pantry? I went—” She waved her hand in a dismissing gesture. “No matter. I met your brother on the road; evidently there’s been more trouble.” Shaking her head at the audacity of the world outside the boardinghouse, Celeste drew her cape from her shoulders. “I don’t want you out alone until this is settled. Day or night. Understood?”
“Yes, Mama.”
The door burst open and the Beasley sisters spilled inside, their faces flushed and their eyes bright with excitement. Both Alma and Amelia Beasley had lived at the boardinghouse for years, and Lettie couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t seen their sweet, apple-withered faces wreathed in smiles and breathless excitement. With hair the texture of spun sugar and a suspicious shade of pale blue, no one could guess the age of the two sisters—though Lettie had an idea that they were much closer to seventy than either would admit.
“Oh, my! Lettie, you should have been there tonight. It was so… magnificent,” Alma, the elder of the two, breathed, regarding Lettie from her unusual height.
Amelia, who served as her sister’s endless echo, smiled and nodded, her petite frame fairly quivering with remembered enjoyment. “Magnificent!”
“I simply adore Poe.”
“Adore him!”
“I shan’t sleep a wink tonight. I just know I shan’t.”
“Nor I!”
Lettie merely smiled. The Beasleys were always losing sleep over something, whether it was a serial story in the Atlantic Monthly or a new hat they’d seen at the milliner’s.
“I’ll bring you some hot milk,” Celeste offered, moving to hang her cape on the coat closet under the stairwell. The stiff fabric of her gown rustled as she walked, and the scent of lemon verbena sifted into the air behind her.
“Oh!” Amelia gasped in delight. “Hot milk! I’d just love a cup of hot milk.”
Alma pinched her smaller sister for her lack of manners in accepting so quickly, shooting Amelia a warning glance. “Celeste, we couldn’t let you do that,” Alma demurred politely, though the sparkle of her eyes clearly revealed the fact that a hot cup of milk before bed was a special treat at the boardinghouse and not something to be denied.
Celeste’s lips twitched, but she managed to control her smile. “I insist. It will only take me a moment.”
“No!” Lettie burst out. Then she smiled, adding graciously, “Let me.” She had to keep her mother out of the kitchen until she could mop up the droplets of blood and hide the stained towels. Moving to wrap a concerned arm around her mother’s shoulder, Lettie turned her away from the kitchen and led her toward the staircase. “You’ve had a late night, Mama. You should go to bed.”
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“I’m sure.”
“Thank you, dear.” Her mother smiled. “I am a bit tired. And with all the baking tomorrow…”
“You sleep. The Misses Beasley don’t mind if I heat their milk, do you?” Though the boarders were rarely given kitchen privileges, the Beasleys had been staying in the house so long that they were regarded more as family than paying guests, and her mother occasionally stretched the rules on their behalf.
“Oh, no.” Alma made a fluttering gesture with a slightly withered hand. “You go to bed, Celeste.”
“Please,” Amelia chimed.
“Very well.” Celeste leaned close to plant a kiss on Lettie’s cheek. When she drew back, her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and a suspicious light gleamed in her hazel eyes. “Just don’t take too long going to bed yourself, Letitia. None of your daydreaming, and none of your poetry. Not tonight.”
“Yes, Mama,” Lettie answered meekly, hoping her mother wouldn’t take it upon herself to check on her. Since the man upstairs was probably hungry, Lettie intended to see to it that he got a slice of her famous gooseberry pie once she’d cleaned up the kitchen. Then she’d go about finding him some extra linens and blankets.
“Lettie?”
“Mmm?”
“Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Abernathy are bringing Mrs. Rupert and the Grubers. Once they’re inside, I want you to bolt the door, then go straight to bed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Celeste stepped onto the first tread, turned, and offered a slight smile. “Good night, then.” And she climbed the rest of the stairs, the train of her dress rustling behind her.
“You should have been there, Lettie,” Alma whispered when Lettie’s mother was out of earshot. “Jonathan Brooks gave an inspiring performance.”
“Inspiring!”
The two sisters removed their cloaks and handed them to Lettie, then climbed the stairs at a snail’s pace, talking to Lettie over the edge of the railing.
“For his rendition of ‘The Mask of the Red Death,’ he came onstage wearing nothing but a pair of tight, tight, leggings—I swear they looked like a pair of long johns—and a flowing shirt slit clear down to his—” Her hand waved in the general direction of her stomach, and she giggled.
“It’s true!” Amelia gasped in delight. “I’ve never seen such legs on a man before, all tight and muscled. And his—”
“Amelia, you go too far!”
“But Alma, you yourself said on the way home that the man had a—”
“Amelia! Letitia is a little young to be hearing such talk from you.”
Amelia blushed and then giggled. “Pardon me. I forgot myself. You shouldn’t participate in the talk of such things until after you’re married.”
Lettie chuckled and turned toward the kitchen, intent upon hanging up the Beasleys’ wraps, then heating their milk. “How can that be, ladies?” she teased. “You two aren’t married, but you seem to talk about such things all the time.”
Dissolving into girlish giggles, the Beasleys disappeared up the stairs toward their rooms, still whispering to each other. Letitia had just h
ung up their capes beside her mother’s when the door opened again and Mr. Goldsmith gallantly stepped aside to usher Dorothy Rupert into the house.
“There you are, madam. Safe and sound, just as I promised.”
“Thank you, Mr. Goldsmith. Good evening, Lettie.”
Lettie smiled and moved forward to take the older woman’s wrap. Dorothy Rupert was a fairly new member to the boardinghouse, having lived there for only a few months. Tall and graceful, a sadness lingered in her pale blue eyes, and the somber colors of mourning she wore denoted some tragedy that she’d never confided in any of the residents.
“Did you enjoy yourself, ma’am?”
Dorothy offered her a small smile. “As a matter of fact, yes. I’ve always adored Poe’s poetry. Of course, his stories are a little gloomy.”
“But since I spent the evening at your side, what could a woman such as yourself fear?”
Dorothy’s eyes gleamed briefly with secret amusement. “Yes, of course, Mr. Goldsmith. You were very gallant. But now I must see about preparing for bed.” She nodded to them both and climbed the stairs, her black dress melting into the darkness at the top of the stairs.
Randolph Goldsmith waited until the lap of her skirts had disappeared down the hall before leaning close to Lettie and whispering in her ear, “I think she likes me. Don’t you think so?”
Lettie bit back a smile as he hurried up the staircase, one hand clamped over his hairpiece to keep it from slipping off the back of his head.
The door swung open again. “But dear, I wish you had abandoned your duties to attend. Then even you could have seen the inherent symbolism of the piece.” Natalie Gruber smiled regally at Lettie, turning her back to her stocky husband.
Silas Gruber reached out to clasp her wrist, his thumb brushing back and forth beneath the edge of her sleeve. His voice dropped to a murmur: “Perhaps you and I could discuss it more tonight. In my room.”
Natalie threw her husband a look of barely concealed impatience. “I think not. I’m very tired tonight, Silas. Very tired.”
Silas’s lips tightened in evident irritation, but he did not speak.
Silken Dreams Page 4